(GOVERNMENT SECURITY NEWS MAGAZINE) — In an effort to monitor the reported outbreaks of infectious diseases worldwide, the DHS office of health affairs plans to contract with a small business to provide a “real-time data feed,” drawn from at least 25,000 online sources, on a 24/7 basis, with its content updated at least hourly.

The data feed, which would be delivered in an email or RSS format, would give the U.S. Government the right to share the information inside the government, as well as outside the government “for U.S. Government purposes,” says a small business set-aside solicitation that was issued by DHS on September 3.

“Through management of the Department’s operational biodefense programs, including the National Biosurveillance Integration Center (NBIC), [the office of health affairs] conducts biosurveillance activities to enable early warning and situational awareness of acute biological events and support better decisions through rapid identification, characterization, localization, and tracking,” explains the solicitation.